The last few weeks have not been exactly good for Facebook, which has been accused of monopoly in two different countries.
United States and Germany they have denounced her for illegal monopoly practices. The reasons given by these countries focus on totally different things that we are going to tell you about now.
Although the United States complaint it has little to do with Virtual Reality, directly affects Oculus’ parent company.
That it is affected by these lawsuits, could pose a danger to their existence if Facebook decides to stop betting on this technology. Although honestly, this would be unlikely to happen.
Why has the United States denounced Facebook?
But for this we have to put ourselves in a situation a bit, in the US Attorneys General from 46 states and two territories have presented a joint demand.
They want to force Facebook to get rid of two of its main Social Networks. Specifically we talk about Instagram and WhatsApp.
These Attorneys General have filed the lawsuit with the Federal Trade Commission for creating an illegal monopoly buying from your competition.
According the New York Attorney, Letitia James, argues that Facebook has crushed those it saw as potential threats for your business. According to the company, it has used its enormous treasuries of data and money to hinder its competition.
The direct consequence of all this is that stifled innovation and degraded privacy protection of its users in the United States, it claims.
How much did Facebook pay for Instagram and WhatsApp?
We have to remember that at the time Facebook came to pay 1000 million dollars for Instagram and another 19,000 million for WhatsApp to acquire them.
What they want to achieve with all this is that courts force Facebook to resell Instagram and WhatsApp to other owners for this supposed monopoly.
On the other hand, they want Mark Zuckerberg’s company stop forcing developers to accept certain abusive clauses to enter their platforms.
If we think about it coldly, Facebook has taken over the main social networks in the world And all this could incur an illegal monopoly crime.
On the part of the company, they have alleged that doing everything the Prosecutors ask would bring big negative consequences for the economy of companies and users themselves.
And why has Germany denounced Facebook?
On the other hand we have Germany, which a few months ago decided to stop the sale of Oculus products in his country. All as a result of forcing its citizens to use a Facebook account.
As we already know, Oculus changed its access policy to your devices. From 2023 it will force that everyone has to use your Facebook account to log in.
Now the Oculus account will have to be merged with our Facebook original so that VR glasses of the company work. All purchases will be transferred there and access through the old account will no longer be used.
Even with this there was also a lot of controversy, since Facebook forces its users to register with your real names. This is necessary since they can be banned in case of not complying with the Terms of Service Conditions of the company.
The problem is that if your Facebook account is blocked or banned, you will lose access to all the content you have purchased for your Oculus Quest or Rift.
Germany believes Facebook is running an illegal monopoly
What we can see is that two days ago the German Government Body Bundeskartellamt investigate if demanding these accounts is a risk. Since it would be something detrimental to the rest of the companies in the sector.
This is because Facebook has a dominant position within the German market with their Social Networks and even a position very privileged with Virtual Reality.
It is no longer just the fact of having to use a Facebook account in the new Virtual Reality viewers, but from January 2023 original Oculus accounts will cease to exist if you haven’t linked them.
This splashes directly to all Virtual Reality viewers, to the new ones because it is mandatory to perform this action already the old ones that in 2023 will stop working if you don’t link your accounts.
Oculus is not currently sold in Germany
One of the consequences of this investigation that was opened in September 2020 is that the sales of the Oculus VR glasses they will no longer be held in Germany.
In fact it is something that has carried over to this day, where if German citizens they want to buy a viewer from this company have to do it outside your country.
At the time, Facebook already explained that it was trying to clarify and educate the German authorities on the practices that the company carried out to demonstrate that it was not an illegal monopoly attempt.
Although they predicted that the pause would be temporary and that they would resume the sale in a short time, the truth is that since September the situation has not evolved, but has even gone further.
We will see how all this evolves during the coming months and the decision made by the Bundeskartellamt in relation to these alleged monopoly practices.
Although on another scale, we could also see that Facebook or in this case Oculus is trying take the monopoly to other sectors, such as making it a SideQuest competition, creating an alternative for users to stop using it.
Do you think this can be transferred to the rest of Europe? Do you have any problems using your Facebook accounts with your Oculus headset? Tell us a bit about these practices and if you agree with the German situation.
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